VisTablet 12-Inch Tablet

Other products by Vistablet

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 12 x 1 x 10 inches ; 2.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000Z06VMG
• Item model number: Vistablet12
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,501 in Electronics (See Bestsellers in Electronics)

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  Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Mice & Keyboards > Digital Tablets

• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 15, 2007

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Pen tablets have been around for some time. Not until recently have they become affordable to the general public. They were primarily used by professionals in the graphic art and photo industries. VisTablet allows you to explore the Internet, draw, paint, write, highlight, and do professional or home photo editing. VisTablet also opens up advanced pen features available in all the new Microsoft Office applications. Through electro-magnetic induction, information is exchanged between the pen and the tablet while your movements are translated to your computer screen. With no stand-alone power supply required, the VisTablet is a great choice for portable computers as well as desktop PC’s. VisTablet will open up the world of design to you in ways that were previously either too expensive or too limiting. VisTablet is the new standard in graphics tablets.

Where is the tablet used?
Tablets are not only used for drawing or tracing. They also function like a mouse to interface with your computer's operating system. Use the pen on the tablet to control your on-screen cursor, move it to a desired location, and click! Vista's new ink input functions in Microsoft Office greatly extend the features of your software and the VisTablet can make those features accessible.

Pressure sensitivity
Pen sensitivity is a very important for professional artists. The more you press the pen down the wider the brush stroke will get. VisTablet currently has 1024 pen sensitivity levels. That matches tablets at twice the price.

Thin is in!
The VisTablet is a solid piece of hardware. While we do not recommend you attempt to flex your tablet, you can confidently stow it behind your laptop in most large slip-cases without even knowing it’s there.

More convenient than a mouse
Tablets are not only used for drawing or tracing, they also function like a mouse to interface with your computer's operating system. Use the pen on the tablet to control your on-screen cursor, move it to a desired location and click. The comfort, precision, and ergonomics of the pen tablet simply cannot be matched.

Finally, affordable tablets
The VisTablet belongs in the professional class of graphics tablets but its price makes it accessible to everyone. VisTablet is the new standard. With high surface-area-to-cost ratios you can finally add a tablet peripheral to your computer system.

VisTablet 12-inch Features

• Large surface area: 12.1-inch widescreen tracing surface
• Extremely thin design for portability
• 29 customizable macro fields
• Fully compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter as well as 100s of other major software applications.
• Works on a PC or Mac.
• Special features in Windows Vista: pen flick navigation, handwriting recognition, email signing, etc.
• 2 Year Warranty and U.S. backed technical support

Product Description

Vistablet 12" (12x10 dimensions), the New Standard in graphic tablets. Pen tablets have been around for some time. Not until recently have they become affordable to the general public. These tablets are ideal for professionals in the Graphic art and Photo industries, students, and general needs for handwriting recognition on your MAC or PC. VisTablet allows you to explore the internet, draw, paint, write, highlight and do professional or home photo editing. Vistablet ahs incorporated all the latest features and benfits needed and expected from a graphics tablet and made it affordable for everyone. The VisTablet has 1,024 levels of sensitivity to the pen-pressure you apply to the surface for superb recognition. System Requirements: Microsoft Windows Vista Microsoft Windows XP (SP 2) Apple OSX (10.3 and later) Please note that the VisTablet graphics tablets are designed to take advantage of built-in features in Windows Vista and MAC OS. Some capabilities will not be available to all users. Mouse capabilities are universal with all compatible operating systems. Always be sure to download the latest drivers available for your operating system.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't get your hopes up, February 1, 2008

By	E. Manrow (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This tablet is okay for what it is, but don't expect the quality and flexibility of more reliable brands.

Let me start by saying that I *really* wanted this tablet to be awesome, as a cheap alternative to Wacom, despite the fact that the company is obviously marketing the tablet through 'customer' reviews (see above). I'm trying to build my own Cintiq-style tablet from a tablet and an LCD monitor, so durability of the casing and appearance don't really matter to me. Those weren't the only problems, however.

First, even the fine print is a little misleading: the true active area on this tablet is 9.5" by 5.5". The 10x6.25 figure includes the massive ring of buttons around the drawing area, which is not active for drawing, only for hitting those buttons.

I could live with that, because I don't need a huge tablet. However, after installing the drivers I noticed that performance is sluggish if you're doing anything more than waving your mouse around the desktop. Do not attempt this tablet with any kind of gaming; you will get pwned.

As an art tablet, the VisTablet still has some drawbacks. It is jumpy at times, and the software provided gives you little to no customization: you cannot specify, for example, how much screen area the tablet should control, or which monitor in a dual monitor setup you want to work in: the tablet will automatically span your full system resolution, meaning the higher resolution your system (especially dual monitor systems) the sloppier the tablet performs. These features are standard in Wacom drivers. What gives?

Then pen itself feels hollow, and requires a battery (unlike other brands). While the specifications suggest that the software detects pen tilt, I see no evidence of that either in Photoshop, or in some software I have to pull the pen data from the OS.

I gave it two stars out of pity, but frankly your money is better spent elsewhere.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty solid, but not perfect., December 12, 2008

By	J. Linton "JLI" (Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I own both this tablet and the wacom bamboo, so this is more a comparison than a proper review.

First, I would like to rebut some things said here, which may have been based on an older version of the driver/hardware, or maybe were just wrong. The most recent version of the driver (3.32) supports both relative as well as absolution positioning. It works on multiple displays, (I have two 1600x1200, displays one in landscape mode) and the driver software lets you select just a portion of your display for absolute positioning, and/or a portion of the tablet as the active region.

That said, the configuration options can be a little buggy, but once set the tablet works as configured.

The tablet's X,Y tracking is smooth, fast and precise, I don't notice a difference between it and the bamboo. I did the same thing another reviewer did, and used a straightedge to check and see if the digitizer was straight. I got nice parallel lines. Maybe, he was using something more precise than me, but I am fairly happy with the X,Y behavior. It works fantastically for handwriting recognition, basic drawing, and as a mouse replacement. Others, have said the response time was slower, but I didn't notice any difference, even with a lot of repetitive sketching type stroke action. That said, if you really go at it, both pads tend to lag slightly even on a fairly fast machine. The lag is noticeable after a lot of very rapid hashing when I lift the pen it continues for ~1/10 of a second. This is possibly the application and not the pad.

That said, the Z axis pressure sensitivity isn't to my liking. The pen tip has a very noticeable spring action and deflects a few millimeters into the pen body as pressure is applied. Using the pen control panel it seems pretty linear and reliable. In some of the software I was using, it seemed to misbehave. Sometimes it would draw heavy lines when I wasn't using much pressure after drawing a heavy line, other times I was unable to draw multiple heavy lines one right after the other. I suspect that this is a software problem that may get worked out in the future, but at the moment can be a real downer if your trying to use it to vary line width, or brush application. Also, as someone else stated, the pressure sensitivity works better if the pen is held vertically instead of at a more natural angle. I removed 1 star for the z axis behavior.

To me, the pen actually feels better than the bamboo pen. The battery weight gives it a nice feeling, even if it makes it slightly top heavy. The buttons on the side took me a little while to accept. They seem a little too high on the pen body. Trying to right click on small items on the screen with the pen button (both of them can be configured) was difficult. I either have the hold the pen in a personally unatural way, or move my fingers without moving the pen to click the button. Frankly, the pen feels cheap, but the bamboo pen (especially the eraser) has an even cheaper feel and the buttons aren't any better.

The one place the vistablet is significantly better than the bamboo is the pen holder. Does anyone even care about that? Its like the mouse the bamboo comes with, its OK but who cares. Similarly, I don't use the assignable "buttons" on the pad, because I have a keyboard (which also has assignable buttons I don't use).

Finally, the software it comes with is lousy. The bamboo ships with photoshop elements, corel painter essentials, and Nik Color Efex Pro plug-ins for photoshop. This probably works out to the difference in price by itself, if you were actually going to purchase those titles or just end up using them (or for that matter using them for competitive upgrades). I knock a 1/2 star off for this, but that might not even be fair, as a lot of people either already have software or end up buying an unrelated product.

In the end, 3 1/2 stars. This depends on how much you intend to use the pressure sensitivity, or if it behaves properly with your software package. If the pressure sensitivity gets fixed, with a driver update, or works fine in different software packages, I could give this a 5 star rating. If it behaves poorly across the board, or is fundamentally an instability in the hardware, I would have to rate this pad a 3.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible Product, June 17, 2008

By	J. Sullivan (Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I purchased this product and cannot even get it to install properly. Customer service was very nice but the person who can help with tech support is a 3rd party and never called me back. I spent 7 frustrating hours trying to get this to work. It will be sent back tomorrow. Don't waste the money.

**Please note: Both 5 star reviewers work for vistablet. I spoke to K. Rodriguez on the phone several times. Don't be fooled. Read up on this product before purchasing.